Enterprise Systems

Enterprise businesses are increasingly using analytics and simulation for
improved decision making with diverse and large quantities of data. However,
new challenges arise in understanding how to design and implement a user
interaction paradigm that is appropriate for technical experts, business users,
and other stakeholders. Technologies developed for sophisticated analyses pose
a challenge for interaction and interface design research when the goal is to
accommodate users with different types and levels of expertise. In this paper
we discuss the results of a multi-phase research effort to explore expectations
for interaction and user experience with a complex technology that is meant to
provide scientists and business analysts with expert-level capability for
advanced analytics and simulation. We find that while there are unique
differences in software preferences of scientists and analysts, that a common
interface is feasible for universal usability of these two user groups.

The number of emergency cases or people making emergency room visit has
rapidly increased annually, leading to an imbalance in supply and demand, as
well as long-term overcrowding of emergency departments (EDs) in hospitals.
However, solutions targeting the increase of medical resources and improving
patient needs are not practicable or feasible in the environment in Taiwan.
Therefore, under the constraint of limited medical resources, EDs must optimize
medical resources allocation to minimize the patient average length of stay
(LOS) and medical resource wasted costs (MWCs). This study constructs a
mathematical model for medical resource allocation of EDs, according to
emergency flow or procedures. The proposed mathematical model is highly complex
and difficult to solve because its performance value is stochastic and it
considers both objectives simultaneously. Thus, this study postulates a
multi-objective simulation optimization algorithm by integrating a
non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA II) and multi-objective
computing budget allocation (MOCBA), and constructs an ED simulation model to
address the challenges of multi-objective medical resource allocation.
Specifically, the NSGA II entails investigating plausible solutions for medical
resource allocation, and the MOCBA involves identifying effective sets of
feasible Pareto medical resource allocation solutions and effective allocation
of simulation or computation budgets. Additionally, the discrete simulation
model of EDs estimates the expected performance value. Furthermore, based on
the concept of private cloud, this study presents a distributed simulation
optimization framework to reduce simulation time and subsequently obtain
simulation outcomes more rapidly. This framework assigns solutions to different
virtual machines on separate computers to reduce simulation time, allowing
rapid retrieval of simulation results and the collection of effective sets of
optimal Pareto medical resource allocation solutions. Finally, this research
constructs an ED simulation model based on the ED of a hospital in Taiwan, and
determines the optimal ED resource allocation solution by using the simulation
model and algorithm. The effectiveness and feasibility of this method are
identified by conducting the experiment, and the experimental analysis proves
that the proposed distributed simulation optimization framework can effectively
reduce simulation time.

Business-IT Alignment (BITA) has the potential to link with organizational
issues that deal with business-IT relationships at strategic, tactical and
operational levels. In such context, information security process (ISP) is one
of the issues that can be influenced by BITA. However, the impact has yet not
been researched. This paper investigates the BITA impact on ISP. For this
investigation, the relationships of elements of the Strategic Alignment Model
and the components of Security Values Chain Model are considered. The research
process is an in-depth literature survey followed by case study in two
organizations located in United States and the Middle East. The results show
clear impact of BITA on how organizations would distribute allocated security
budget and resources based on the needs and risk exposure. The results should
support both practitioners and researchers to gain improved insights of the
relationships between BITA and IT security components.

Given the advantages of and significant impact that Cloud-based CRMs have
had on achieving competitive edge, they are becoming the primary choice for
many organizations. However, due to the growth of concerns around cloud
computing, cloud services might not be adopted with as much alacrity as was
expected. A variety of factors may affect the willingness to adopt a
cloud-based CRM. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to explore the
factors that influence the adoption of a cloud-based CRM in SME's, from the
perspectives of the client organizations and users. We then propose a research
model, grounded in the Resource Based View Framework (RBV), the Theory of
Technology Acceptance Model (TAM2), Risks and Trust Theories. This report
recommends a research methodology. It offers recommendations for practitioners
and cloud service providers to effectively assist in the adoption of
cloud-based CRMs in organizations.

Ongoing surveillance of disease outbreaks is important for public health
officials, who to need consult with laboratory technicians in identifying
specimen and coordinate care for affected populations. One way for public
health officials to monitor possible outbreaks is through digital dashboards of
summarized public health data. This study examines best practices for designing
public health dashboards and proposes an optimized interface for an emergency
response system for state public health laboratories. The practical nature of
this research shows how general dashboard guidelines can be used to design a
specialized dashboard for a public health emergency response information
system. Through our analysis and design process, we identified two new
guidelines for consideration.

This paper reports findings from a study conducted to evaluate Intel's
Service Delivery Platform for small businesses. The Service Delivery Platform
adopted a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) approach, and aimed to deliver
information technology (IT) services on a pay-as-you-go subscription model. The
majority of small business decision makers found the solution appealing.
Nevertheless, wide adoption of the solution will be contingent on quality and
breadth of service offerings, cost, reliability of service delivery, and
responsiveness of support.

Like many, our company had a wealth of data about business users that
included both big data by-products of operations (e.g., transactions) and
outputs of traditional User Experience (UX) methods (e.g. interviews). To fully
leverage the combined intelligence of this rich data, we had to aggregate big
data and the outputs of traditional UX together. By connecting user stories to
big data, we could test the generalizability of insights of qualitative studies
against the larger world of business users and what they actually do.
Similarly, big data benefited from the rich contextual insights found in more
traditional UX studies. In this paper, we present a hybrid analysis approach
that allowed us to leverage the combined intelligence of big data and outputs
of UX methods. This approach allowed us to define an over-arching experience
framework that provided actionable insights across the enterprise. We will
discuss the underlying methodology, key learnings and how the work is
revolutionizing experience decision making within the enterprise.

Keywords: UX Strategy; Big Data; Qualitative Data; User Research

The Role of Human Factors in Production Networks and Quality Management

Quality management in production networks is often neglected. To raise
awareness for this subject, we developed an educational game in which players
are responsible for managing orders and investments in quality assurance of a
manufacturing company. To understand individual performance differences and
playing strategy, we conducted a web-based study with 127 participants.
Individual performance differences were discovered. Players who closely observe
the company data and frequently modify order levels and quality investments
perform significantly better. Furthermore, we found that the game model works
and that the awareness towards quality assurance increases through the
interaction with the game. Hence, the game is a suitable educational tool for
teaching decision making in quality management.

User acceptance testing (UAT) events gather input from actual system users
to determine where potential problems may exist in a new software system or
major upgrade. Modern business systems are more complex and decentralized than
ever before making UAT more complicated to perform. The collaborative nature of
facilitated UAT events requires close interaction between the testers and the
facilitation team, even when located in various locations worldwide. This study
explores the best approaches for facilitating UAT remotely and globally in
order to effectively facilitate geographically-dispersed actual system users in
performing UAT exercises. While research suggests user involvement is
important, there is a lack of understanding about the specifics of how to best
engage users for maximizing the results, and our study addresses this gap. This
study examines the following research questions: How should UAT facilitators
(1) schedule user participation with a minimum impact to their regular work
duties and maximum ability to be present when testing and not be distracted;
(2) enable direct interactions with users including face-to-face conversations
during the UAT event and access to user computer screens for configuration and
validation; and (3) utilize quality management software that can be used
seamlessly by all involved in UAT. To examine these questions, we utilize
Social Presence Theory (SPT) to establish a conceptual lens for addressing
these research questions. SPT supports that the communication environment must
enable people to adopt the appropriate level of social presence required for
that task. This study proposes a theoretically-derived examination based on SPT
of facilitated UAT delineating when and how facilitators should involve actual
system users in the UAT activities either through local facilitation or remote
hosting of UAT exercises, among other options.

This paper describes research that aims to provide a new strategy for
Customer Relationship Management for Air Transportation. It presents our
proposed approach based on Knowledge Management processes, Enterprise Risk
Management and Case-Based Reasoning. It aims to mitigate risks facing in air
transportation process. The principle of this method consists in treating a new
risk by counting on previous former experiments (case of reference). This type
of reasoning rests on the following hypothesis: if a past risk and the new one
are sufficiently similar, then all that can be explained or applied to the past
risks or experiments (case bases) remains valid if one applies it to the new
risk or for new situation which represents the new risk or problem to be
solved. The idea of this approach consists on predicting adapted solution
basing on the existing risks in the case base having the same contexts.

Web marketing is a key activity of e-commerce. Due to the proliferation of
internet technology, available internet marketing data become huge and complex.
Efficient use of such large data maximizes the profit of web marketing.
Although there are a variety of studies motivated by these backgrounds, there
still remains room for improvement on data usage. In this paper, we have
proposed a method to realize faithful bidding of web advertisement. The
experimental results show: 1) The use of data by the current operators is
unreliable, 2) By using the proposed method, the advertisement value of bidding
becomes clear. For example, the method could find a cluster of advertisements
that has clear cost-effectiveness over other clusters.

Social Media for Business

Online social networks, and Facebook in particular, have evolved from a
niche to a mass phenomenon. Organizations have recognized the importance of
using Facebook to achieve their organizational goals. Still, literature lacks a
systematic evaluation scheme for measuring the performance of an organization's
Facebook use. When investigating how organizations use Facebook, research tends
to focus on for-profit organizations, overlooking the way social organizations
use Facebook. This article introduces an evaluation scheme that includes nine
categories of performance measurement. Applying the scheme to Facebook's use by
social organisations in Vienna, we demonstrate the scheme's applicability.
Plus, by using various indicators and benchmarks, we evaluate the level of
sophistication of each organization's use of Facebook. We investigated all 517
social organizations based in Vienna, including those in all fields of
practice, based on publicly available Facebook data from January to June 2012.
The analysis reveals that the majority of social organizations are beginners at
utilizing Facebook's potential.

Cyberbullying is a phenomenon that involves aggressive behaviors performed
through Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) with the intention to
cause harm or discomfort to victims. Researchers have measured the incidence of
cyber-bullying by presenting participants with a list of behaviors and
determining whether they have experienced those behaviors or the frequency of
their occurrence. However, those measures do not take into account a victim's
perspective of those behaviors. This study draws on the Transactional Theory of
Stress and Coping and introduces the concept of perceived cyber-bullying
severity to measure a victim's appraisal of cyberbullying. This study also
proposes a set of antecedents to perceived cyber-bullying severity, which will
be validated using a survey-based study and structural equation modeling
techniques.

With the rise of social media marketing as an important domain of practice
and research, a growing number of scholarly and practitioner articles have
emerged highlighting best practices in social media marketing. Despite this
proliferation of articles exploring the topic of social media marketing, no
comprehensive frameworks exist that offer insight into the underlying
components of effective social media marketing messages and the relations
between them. Amalgamating constructs from a variety of disciplinary
backgrounds -- including marketing, advertising, communication, and information
systems -- this paper offers a theoretical framework and empirical
investigation of the relations between four message components, namely purchase
involvement, messaging strategy, message content, and media types. Using
longitudinal data from ten Fortune 500 companies, we validate our comprehensive
framework and find support for all hypotheses, thereby validating the
importance of using an integrated approach to social media message design.
Implications for research and practice are outlined.

This paper is a review of literature relevant to the Internet, happiness,
and social interaction. The definition of happiness is discussed, emphasizing
its subjective quality, followed by a review of studies that have examined the
correlates of happiness. This is followed by a review of studies on internet
use, happiness, and social interaction, which yields the conclusion that the
internet can facilitate social communication and interpersonal connections,
which is, in turn, associated with higher levels of happiness and well being.

The concept of Enterprise 2.0 relates to the use of Web 2.0 technologies
such as blogs, social networks or wikis, in enterprises and it has been at the
centre of several debates among the business community. Controversy aside, many
enterprises have already openly adopted and supported the implementation of Web
2.0 technologies. This growing interest in the Social Web as a business
resource has captured the attention of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).
This paper focuses on the adoption of Enterprise 2.0's practices inside SMEs
and uses the Portuguese case as an illustration of the current scenario. It
examines the implementation of Web 2.0 tools inside Portuguese elite SMEs and
provides guiding principles for the general proficiency of SME 2.0.

Suggesting further reading materials is an application of recommendation.
Considering context, current systems usually rely on topic information and
related materials to propose options for users, while users behavior is also
commonly used if log information is involved. However, the users interests,
which are aroused by the content of the current article they read instead of
what they have had, are seldom detected from the context, and they are usually
the motive that readers want to read more. This paper presents an approach to
detect readers' interest from the current article they read and the users
feedback of it. TED talks are utilized as the experimental materials.
InterestFinder proposes interest keywords/keyphrases for each talk, where
different kind of words and phrases are provided to it to find suitable
candidate terms. Experiments show that the best setting proposed achieves a
NDCG@50 0.6392, and the detail results are discussed. Results conclude that
considering both words and phrases in a proper selection criteria benefits, and
finding conceptual keyphrases as interest terms is necessary to further improve
the system performance.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships between three
dimensions of interactivity (user control, responsiveness and connectedness)
and consumers' perceived value composed of utilitarian and hedonic values on
ACG resources searching, finally determining the level of overall satisfaction
on using interactivity features in ACG portable site service. A total of 430
respondents participated and the usable sample size was 136 of goal-directed
users and 180 of experiential users, after the screening process. The results
indicate that both perceived utilitarian and hedonic values have a positive
effect on satisfaction in the ACG portal site. But goal-directed users more
concern about utilitarian than hedonic value, and experiential users more
concern about hedonic value than utilitarian.

This research paper focuses on factors which affect the continued use of
social media technology. Using the Technology Acceptance Model, the Theory of
Reasoned Action and the Theory of Planned Behavior, a research model was
constructed which focused on a set of core constructs, including Perceived
Usefulness, Social Norms, Self-Efficacy, and Attitudes and their overall impact
on users Continuous Intent to Use social media technologies. Results will be
shared with conference participants.

Bloggers are now turning to more creative ways to share their knowledge,
thoughts, ideas, and opinions (information) while making it an easier
experience for them and their viewers. image-blogging has become a tool for
those looking to share information through multimedia with their viewers. This
paper is part of a larger project looking into a broader investigation of
image-blog usage. Understanding what encourages adoption and use of a image
blog by its audience is of interest to companies looking to utilize such
technologies to their benefit.

The popularity of Social Networking Sites (SNS) such as Facebook or Twitter,
along with their potential as marketing tools, is drawing the attention of
entrepreneurs and developers to create their own SNS. Research about SNS users'
behaviour is focused on users' participation, leaving a gap in relation to
users' reasons for joining a new SNS. Thus, our work aims to contribute to the
literature by investigating the main motivations that a SNS user has for
joining a new SNS. Following the framework of the decomposed theory of planned
behaviour (DTPB), a two-step structural equation model was implemented in order
to answer the research question. Findings made it possible to explain 55% of
the intention to join a new SNS. In order to explain the intention, the
attitude towards the new network plays a key role, which in turn is directly
influenced by perceived usefulness. Our findings invite SNS practitioners
working on creating new social media websites or services to pay special
attention to how to portray the new SNS in order to be appealing for the users.
On the theoretical implications, the proposed model confirmed the need to
include additional variables to the TPB in order to gain a better understanding
of the phenomena studied.

In this paper we present a method for the automatic detection of user-stated
intentions in terms of desires, purposes and commitments as specific insights
deriving from the semantics of the intention expressions. The method is based
on a linguistic data-driven and domain-independent framework for textual
intention analysis and achieves substantial levels of accuracy in detecting
future intention expressions and their structural components. Furthermore, we
demonstrate several usage scenarios in the business intelligence context
showing that the introduced insights can be interpreted from various
perspectives and serve as variables in predictive or decision making models in
any domain of interest.

This study aims to examine how the relationship with an information source
affects the perceived credibility of online information. We develop a general
framework that explains how people perceive information credibility when they
are familiar with the information source and/or when the information source
seems credible. We then compare the associations of the model in two contexts,
namely, online review and social media sites, to examine the difference. The
result confirms that credibility of information is strongly mediated by
credibility of information source than familiarity with information source in
online review sites and vice versa in social media sites.

This study explores whether wearing a beard in a LinkedIn profile picture
affects a candidate's prospects of being invited for a job interview and
whether this is contingent on the type of job vacancy. Based on Ohanian's
(1990) three sub dimensions of credibility, three different job vacancies were
constructed: (1) architect for an expertise-job, (2) back cashier officer for a
trustworthiness-job, and (3) sales representative for an attractiveness-job.
Results of a 2 (candidate: beard versus no beard) x 3 (job type: expertise,
trustworthiness, attractiveness) experiment conducted among 216 participants
show that bearded candidates are perceived as having more expertise than
clean-shaven candidates. Moreover, a candidate's perceived expertise is a
significant predictor of the intention to invite the candidate for a job
interview. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are
discussed.

Due to the popularity of link-based applications, one of the most important
issues in web searching is how to retrieve information effectively from
multiple sources. Consider Wikipedia as an example; users browse content by
following hyperlinks from one page to another. A regular hyperlink states that
there are some relationships between the two pages. Search engines like Google
successfully use this type of information to rank pages in keyword search
scenarios. Wikipedia can go even beyond that as a link is interpreted as the
semantic relations between two concepts described within articles. Search
engines and web-based, free-content encyclopedias have become key tools for
finding and extracting useful information from the tremendous amounts of data
that are available online. We extended our previous application, WNavis,
by integrating the search function with the term semantic path suggestion
techniques for aggregated searches. Note that research into aggregated searches
(integrated searches) addresses the issues of presenting to users a result list
with information from various websites and media types. Accordingly the WikiMap
# application, extended from our previous application, WNavis, was
developed. Finally we proposed our preliminary research design extended
evaluation measures in this study.

Mobile and Ubiquitous Commerce

The growing complexity of manufacturing calls for new approaches to support
the human workforce with situation-aware information and tools which in
consequence ease the process of understanding and applying work related
knowledge. With this paper we introduce a theoretical model for a systematic
information transfer between assistance system and worker. It defines
assistance objectives and reviews the role of artifacts during the assistance
process focusing on the cognitive aspects of work. Our approach was implemented
using smartwatches for application in industrial assembly environments
extending the Plant@Hand manufacturing performance support system.

A Qualitative Investigation of 'Context', 'Enterprise Mobile Services' and
the Influence of Context on User Experiences and Acceptance of Enterprise
Mobile Services

Within this paper an account of a qualitative investigation into Enterprise
Mobile Services and their 'Context' is recorded. Employing Qualitative Content
Analysis, two taxonomies are derived; An Enterprise Mobile Service Taxonomy and
a 'Context' Taxonomy. The researcher also investigates current Context factors
which have been proven to influence users' experiences and the acceptance of
Enterprise Mobile Services. These are highlighted in the 'Context' taxonomy.
The researcher intends to further investigate the influence of Context on
users' acceptance of Enterprise Mobile Services subsequently it is necessary to
select appropriate Context criteria for inclusion. This paper describes this
selection process; a focus group with Industry experts was conducted following
the KJ method. The Context criteria to be further investigated were selected.
The criteria which describe enterprise mobile services were also selected. The
results of the qualitative investigation reveal Context items which may
potentially influence the acceptance of Enterprise Mobile Services. The HCI and
IS domains could benefit from further investigations into the influence of
these Context items on users experiences and acceptance to allow for an even
deeper understanding of the influence of Context.

The popularity of mobile devices, such as smart phones and tablets, provides
both new opportunities and challenges for companies. Mobile devices allow
companies to reach users anywhere, anytime; however, these devices present the
challenge of designing websites that can adapt to smaller screen sizes. Because
competition is shifting more and more toward user experience, creating a
positive mobile experience is becoming increasingly important in maintaining a
competitive edge in the market place. To address this issue, we measured the
user experience of an actual e-commerce website before and after it was
optimized for mobile devices and used Google Analytics to follow user behavior.
The results suggested that optimized websites are likely to have a major
positive impact on the ROI for a company.

This paper investigates the performance of self in a virtual dressing room
based on a camera-based system reflecting a full body mirrored image of the
self. The study was based on a qualitative research approach and a
user-centered design methodology. 22 participants participated in design
sessions, semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire investigation. The
results showed that the system facilitated self-recognition, self-perception,
and shared experience, which afforded an enriched experience of the performing
self.

The field of parking is going through a period of extreme innovation. Cities
in the United States are now exploring new technology to improve on-street
parking. One such innovation is dynamic pricing based on sensors and smart
meters. This paper presents the results of two surveys and an ethnographic
study in the context of LA Express Park™ to understand users' behaviors,
knowledge and perceptions around parking. Survey results demonstrated that a
high number of users misunderstood one of three tested stickers that convey
time of day pricing. Furthermore, after discovering the availability of cheaper
parking spots nearby, people expressed willingness to change their future
behavior to park in those places. Ethnographic field studies found that it is
common for many parkers to use handicapped placards for over eight hours in one
parking session. A percentage of these parkers may be using placards illegally.
We propose that increasing some parking restrictions during the day may curb
placard use by making it more difficult to park for long periods.

In the near future, more and more personalized products will be offered.
Presenting physical, customizable products to the customer in all possible
variations can be very complicated and space-consuming. Virtual life-size
representations of these kinds of products are common and offer an attractive
product experience. An interactive product configuration allows customers to
explore several variations on their own. The combination with natural
interaction technologies, such as gesture input, also allows users, which are
mostly unfamiliar with technology, to explore product variety efficiently. The
research presented in this paper focuses on motion-based interaction in public
spaces. The application field are trade fair environments and the target group
are elderly people with specific needs. We present a design methodology for the
development of full-body gestures adapted to our application field of
configuring large-sized products (specifically caravans) on large displays in
trade fair environments using full-body interaction.

The increasing availability of electronic applications in physical retail
stores has created a series of interesting research opportunities with
challenging managerial implications for practitioners. Since the graphical user
interface design constitutes a critical user-consumer influencing factor in the
context of a multichannel retailing environment, there are several
multidisciplinary research initiatives that could add value towards an
integrated investigation of this topic. To this end, the paper discusses the
promising role of combining Information Systems and Marketing disciplines for
conducting behavioural studies in the context of multichannel/omnichannel
retailing, approaching humans both as users of information systems and
consumers of retail stores. Similarly, the paper treats the screen of the
electronic applications available in online and offline retail stores both as a
graphical user interface of an information system and as the
atmosphere/servicescape of a retail store. The paper provides several future
research directions and practical implications for this fast evolving topic.

The recent years have seen a spurt of mobile developers in hypercompetitive
mobile platform ecosystems. Yet, this is an unfair game where platform owners
such as Apple, Google or Microsoft fence the information of their app store as
top secrets. Our study, therefore, takes an important step in investigating the
structure of rankings and sales revenue through 2,761 paid applications with
weekly aggregated 32,109 observations to unveil a new indicator of market
intelligence, earning per download. With the consideration of category effects,
time effects and endogenity issues, our empirical results show that top-ranked
paid apps can earn up to $7.80 per download. Our findings generate a number of
insights for app developers to take actions in designing highly-ranked apps as
well as manipulating prices, promotions or in-app purchases in order to unlock
the full potential of their app sales.

In this paper, we will introduce CMM, a mobile couponing platform that
allows retailers to create virtual coupons, and consumers to download and
redeem them through NFC technology. In developing the system, we followed a
user-centered design approach, adopting an iterative design process. Moreover,
we studied the way consumers interact through NFC technology in mobile
couponing applications. For this purpose, we arranged an analysis on user
needs, a usability evaluation performed by experts, and a survey involving
final users. The paper will show the most important findings from these
studies.

Information-intensive websites such as those for outdoor recreation and
tourism present complex design considerations and issues that need to be
researched for mobile access. To gain a better understanding of the
expectations and desires of users regarding a mobile application for outdoor
recreation, researchers created a mobile application prototype for the US Army
Corps of Engineers, which was subsequently tested for usability at two
recreation sites in Kentucky with local participants. We provide an overview of
our methods and results, and best practices we have gleaned from our findings.
Our research is especially applicable for mobile applications that require
access to a large amount of information and for a broad audience, and we also
hope our study encourages more research in these areas.

Gamification in Business

This paper first examines the theoretical underpinnings of a number of
popular gamification mechanics. Next, it examines the motivational and
behavioral tendencies displayed by various personality types (based on the
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment) before attempting to pair them with the
gamification techniques that most closely map to these tendencies. The specific
gamification techniques were chosen due to their popularity and effectiveness
in commonly used tools and applications, such as productivity tools and social
games. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was chosen because of its relative
popularity within corporate environments (as compared to other potential
options, such as the Five Factor Model). This is seen as beneficial in order to
facilitate the acceptance and utilization of the research within
business-oriented settings, such as training programs or consumer applications.

This research is part of an ongoing study of the usefulness of avatar-based
collaborative environments in comparison to software platforms that mostly
utilize audio and video in two dimensional settings like those used in
GoToMeeting/Traning. Second Life is explored as a viable option for
avatar-based collaborative teams and other telework. This research investigated
a potential relationship between engagement, in terms of leader-member exchange
and team interaction in software platforms that utilized an avatar-based
collaborative environment in relation to one that did not. This initial pilot
study examining feedback gathered from user experience of engagement and
leader-member exchanges is used to develop insight into the proper instrument
selection that will be utilized to conduct a larger quantitative study. A mixed
methods approach consisting of inquiry from past instruments that measure
engagement (Gajendra et al., 2012), satisfaction (Camman et al., 1998), social
presence within a virtual environment (Witmer & Singer, 1998) and the
technology acceptance model (TAM)(Shroff, Deneen, & Ng, 2011) is used. The
findings suggest that avatar-based environments may impact leader-member
exchange through increased engagement.

We synthesized the literature on gamification of education by conducting a
review of the literature on gamification in the educational and learning
context. Based on our review, we identified several game design elements that
are used in education. These game design elements include points,
levels/stages, badges, leaderboards, prizes, progress bars, storyline, and
feedback. We provided examples from the literature to illustrate the
application of gamification in the educational context.

Keywords: Gamification; Game design elements; Education; Learning

An Investigation of User Interface Features of Crowdsourcing Applications

We investigated the user interface features of seven different types of
crowdsourcing applications, which were classified along three dimensions of
task type: (1) Task Structure: does the task have a well-defined solution? (2)
Task Interdependence: can the task be solved by an individual or does it
require a community of problem solvers? (3) Task Commitment: what level of
resources is required to perform the task? Our initial investigation revealed a
number of differences in the seven categories including: site searchability,
online credentialing, community building features, gamification, mobility, and
the use of wiki software.

Gamification is the design process that applies the principles of digital
games along with behavior economics and psychology to enhance existing
processes that facilitate user behavior transformation. The application of
gamification remains very much a craft, difficult to understand and harder to
master without the benefit of experience. Consequently, there is a lack of
comprehensible tools that lower the barrier to use and leverage the benefits of
gamification by non-experts. This paper presents the gamification cards created
within the context of the European MyNeighbourhood project to support co-design
activities by the citizens. The paper also shares the lessons learnt from one
of the gamification workshops involving stakeholders from neighbourhoods from
four European cities (Aalborg, Birmingham, Lisbon and Milan).

Keywords: Co-design; gamification

Applications of a Roleplaying Game for Qualitative Simulation and
Cooperative Situations Related to Supply Chain Management

This article presents the current stage in the development of a serious
game. The main goal of this game is to provide an environment where students
and professionals can train Supply Chain Management (SCM) accordingly to a
qualitative point-of-view. The Serious Game consists of a Roleplaying Game
system for SCM training and simulation, where players simulate, as characters,
organizations placed into a Supply Chain with mutual interdependence
relationships. During the play session, players respond to situations faced in
a simulated organizational setting (a market, a producer or consumer of goods
and services) and experience the challenges of an organizational environment.
The research method consisted of four consecutive phases: research,
development, application and evaluation of this game. The article concludes
pointing future possibilities to use the game system in purposes related to SCM
area, such as Quality and Environmental Management, Health and Safety,
development of new products and services, among other.

Mobile apps have been developed for marketing purposes and for creating new
opportunities for firms to communicate with and satisfy their target audience.
However, numerous mobile apps are added daily to the Google Play and Apple App
Store. This study developed a mobile application to encourage customers to
participate and engage in a marketing campaign in order to increase their
potential opportunity for making purchases in an internationally branded
apparel store. In this study, we applied a systematic framework of Internet
marketing with four strategic stages: attract, engage, retain, and monetize,
for guiding and ensuring the success of the marketing campaign. Two human
factor researchers were planned, and we administered a focus group interview
with six computer game designers for retrieving persuasive game mechanics from
existing games. Afterward, we classified the collected gamification mechanics
into the four stages, according to their Internet marketing functionality. By
referring to the generated gamification mechanics, we then developed a mobile
application for supporting a apparel store marketing campaign. Customers'
engagement behavior and purchase results were measured. This paper discussed
the implications of this study on both research and practice.

Developing a usable checkout process is pivotal for e-business success.
However, recent research has shown that users frequently abandon their shopping
carts and lacking a clear direction through the process. In this context,
aiming to improve the usability and overall user experience of checkout
processes in ecommerce Web-sites, this paper reports on a study, primarily
inspired by concepts driven from theories of individual differences in
cognitive processing, and considers content presentation and navigability as a
measure of checkout usability and task quality. Concurrent think-aloud, short
interviews and questionnaires were conducted with a convenient sample of 15
users to understand the preference of a particular type of checkout process,
and users' task completion time while interacting with ecommerce Web-sites for
a set of different checkout scenarios. Preliminary results revealed that
cognitive styles have an effect on users' task completion and checkout process
preference.

We investigated the influence of photo-realistic avatars and reputation
scores on trust building in online transactions. In Experiment 1, 126
participants played a computer-mediated trust game with three avatar conditions
(trustworthy, untrustworthy, and no seller avatar) and three reputation
conditions (positive, negative, and no seller reputation). Both trustworthy
avatars and positive reputation scores led to higher purchase rates. We also
found a significant interaction between avatars and reputation scores,
suggesting that the effect of avatars was stronger when the reputation score
induced uncertainty. To further support this effect, we systematically varied
uncertainty levels in Experiment 2, in which 147 participants played another
trust game. Results again confirmed that participants relied more on avatars in
their decisions under high uncertainty. Taken together, the results show that
avatars can help to reduce uncertainty and to improve trust building in
e-commerce settings.

Fostered by the emergence of web technologies and of new streams like
ubiquitous computing, social media or mobile technologies, a lot of attention
has been directed to the field of Web Analytics in order to learn about
technology usage behavior of end-users, such as customers or employees of
enterprises. Going beyond the scope of online marketing and business
intelligence, Web Analysts can be of relevance for typical Human-Computer
Interaction (HCI) activities, i.e. designing user interfaces for new business
software or evaluating the usability of an existing solution. Thus, this paper
aims at elaborating the usefulness of Web Analytics for the HCI domain.
Therefore, we conducted an empirical study in order to gather working tasks and
professional competencies of Web Analysts by analyzing international job
advertisements. Consequently, we draw conclusions on how Web Analysts can
support HCI activities with regard to this task and competence profile. It
shows that Web Analysts can be of use in HCI practice, i.e. within the
usability engineering lifecycle, in HCI research, e.g. for typical design
science approaches, and whenever users interact with web-based software
applications.

This research is to investigate what persuasive tactics are utilized by
current e-commerce Web sites, how consumers react to the persuasive triggers on
e-commerce Web sites, and what about the relative importance of the salient
persuasive factors that are salient to online consumers. A total of 15
persuasive tactics and 9 salient factors were identified from the data of Web
site reviews and user interviews. The AHP analysis revealed that the persuasive
factors appealing to a site's credibility and logic are more important than
appealing to users' emotions.

In this paper, we consider the role of design thinking and human computer
interaction design (HCID) in shaping conditions for a long-term health of
technology intensive organizations. Design thinking is gaining acceptance in
management, strategy and leadership and is increasingly seen as a way towards
finding solutions to complex problems of today's economy. We present our view
on relationships between HCID and design thinking on one hand, and creative
leadership, vision, values, knowledge and organizational culture on the other,
as factors in shaping the competitive advantage for IT-intensive organizations.
We find that, while HCID is systematically contributing to design of innovative
technological solutions, it does so at a micro level, while design thinking
holds a central position in our competitive advantage framework. Through a
small case of innovation in the academic library, we provide insight in how
design thinking and HCID facilitated changes in how the library sees its users,
products, services and how it, subsequently, started changing its
organizational vision, values, culture and knowledge.

Online shopping has progressed from having consumers passively browse
through web pages of products to having them proactively engage in
communication dialogs with product sellers via Live-Chat. Through Live-Chat,
consumers can directly contact the sellers and inquire about their products of
interest. This study extends the conceptual framework of motivation,
opportunity, and ability (MOA) to understand the antecedents and consequences
of Live-Chat usage in consumers' online shopping process. Our survey involving
222 online consumers validated the proposed conceptual model and confirmed most
of our assumptions. For antecedents, we found that MOA factors generally
influence the Live-Chat usage of consumers in their shopping process.
Specifically, perceived information asymmetry, fears of seller opportunism and
perceived personal expertise have strong positive effects on Live-Chat usage.
For consequences, Live-Chat usage positively affects consumers' perceived
interactivity, thereby reducing their uncertainty in transaction. Our findings
contribute to the understanding of real-time communication technology in
specific and digital service for e-commerce in general.

The growingly important role of services in economies leads to an increasing
competition. Thus, services have to be provided as efficient as possible.
Corresponding to the industrial domain, the management of productivity is an
important factor of success. Since productivity management of services is
relatively new compared to the industrial domain, only few scientific studies
exist. The paper adds to this topic by conducting an extensive survey of the
current status of productivity management of service companies in Germany. The
findings could support both business and science by giving a reference of
service productivity management in practice and identifying gaps regarding the
development of tools and methods.

Keywords: Service Productivity; Service Performance

Consumer Preferences for the Interface of E-Commerce Product Recommendation
System

A recommendation system (RS) in a website is increasingly significant for
consumer's decision making. A RS includes several important benefits, such as
increasing user satisfaction and building user trust. Despite the growing
literature that examined the usefulness of a specific attribute of a RS, less
is known about which combination of attributes of a RS is preferable and how
the combination influences consumer decision making. By using a conjoint
analysis, we can further explore the impacts of combination attributes. In a
lab experiment, we find that the importance ranking of attributes of a RS for
the participants is quite different. Specifically, all the participants
consider the attribute, "Explanation for Recommendation", is important. In
addition, "Rating" is important for the specific participants. Furthermore,
"Comment" seems to be less important to all the participants. Our results have
important implications for the design of a RS.

Online group-buying mechanism evolves from earlier variant with dynamic
discount pricing mechanism to daily-deal variant with fixed discount pricing
mechanism. Both mechanisms still face the challenge of attracting customers,
either merchants or buyers. In this paper, we examine online group buying
mechanisms by conducting an exhaustive review of online group-buying
literature. Through identifying key design features for group-buying business
models, we aim to propose a more sustainable group-buying mechanism. Based on
the review of 46 articles, we propose that sustainable group-buying mechanism
need to balance the benefits of both merchants and buyers. The nature of
group-buying needs to be emphasized, but the mechanism should not be too
complicated or simple.

This paper illustrates how Cores and Paths work together with the user
inter-views in web design by a real case of the design for a fund web. The
Cores and Paths method which lays more emphasis on the core demand was first
put for-ward by Are Halland. The framework of the website is decided by both
the user goals and business goals. Through the analysis of inward paths and
outward paths, the redundant information is reduced. Cores and Paths is a
method of high efficiency and effectiveness for information construction. In
this design project, we go through the process of the desk study, the user
interviews, the information construction, the interactive prototyping, the
usability test and the final improvement. We know that the user interviews
serve as a crucial part throughout the whole process by giving an effective and
direct guidance to the following design.

The number of people with vision-related disabilities is on the rise. Since
a significant portion of the population is "Web-reliant" already, understanding
how visual impairments effect website usage and evaluation is important from
both a business and societal perspective. This research tests the relevance of
the website quality measure, WebQual, in low vision populations. Specifically,
the website evaluation, using WebQual, of "sighted" users is compared to those
with low to no vision. Preliminary results show that WebQual remains a highly
valuable website quality measure in both populations.

Keywords: WebQual; Website Quality; Visual Disabilities

First in Search -- How to Optimize Search Results in E-Commerce Web Shops

Customers of e-commerce web sites frequently use the full text search to
find the desired products. The ranking of the search result page depends on
various criteria such as the matching of search terms or popularity of the
product. E-commerce vendors usually use additional ranking criteria and may
want to increase conversion rates by varying the rankings of the search hits.
This paper proposes a method to measure the impact of changing the ranking of
the search result page. The method is applied to a b2b e-commerce shop with
office products.

The field of manufacturing is mainly concern with the creation of products
for consumers who demand these items. At Indiana State University's Advance
Manufacturing Management (AMM) Program, phases of the entire value chain are
emphasized to students in a senior level undergraduate course structured as a
simulated industrial manufacturing company (SIMCO). The course entails design,
prototyping, manufacturing and finally marketing of a product. While the first
three phases are easily emphasized the final phase, marketing, lacks a holistic
strategy that embodies the previous activity. Marketing activities are
therefore disjointed, in turn, affecting the potential revenue of the product.
This research project originated as a demonstration and proof of concept --
human-computer interaction and marketing strategies become equally valuable as
the product in the later stages of the value chain, where ecommerce is
integrated.
The objective of this study is to determine the most effective marketing
strategy for university-related products manufactured by students for ISU
students, alumni and families. The uniqueness of the processes involved in the
products manufactured and their target population affords a distinct
comparative evaluation between two marketing strategies, where one promotes the
product through emphasis on university pride/association and the other
emphasizes general product characteristics. The analysis and results support
the use of a customized marketing strategy with emphasis on ISU school spirit
to increase customer information satisfaction and gain a competitive edge.

Supporting Collaboration, Business and Innovation

In order to use external knowledge sources for innovation activities in
organizations, recently Crowdsourcing platforms have been increasingly
suggested and used. Critical success factors for such platforms include user
motivation and participation, however the effect of those factors is still
little understood. The aim of this paper is to analyze the extent to which
selected Crowdsourcing platforms consider motivating and incentive factors from
a human computer interaction perspective. Motivated by Malone's principles for
designing enjoyable user interfaces we employed this framework as reference to
conduct a participatory heuristic evaluation. The results of this paper
demonstrate that there are several areas of improvement. At present
intrinsically motivating factors in regard to the user interface are only
addressed to a limited extent.

As a cornerstone of open innovations' success, the work of external search
has been altered by the advancement in information technologies (ITs). This
study depicts the IT-induced evolution of open search patterns in two case
firms. While three patterns were observed in both firms, they took different
trajectories of open search pattern change due to the different enabling roles
of ITs. ITs were found to serve as an amplifier and a catalyst to induce
different trajectories. This study contributes to the literature by unveiling
the process of open search evolution including identifying different open
search patterns and the roles of ITs. The managerial lessons learned from the
two case firms can be applied by other firms.

The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) has shown in the USA that the
Perceived Usefulness (PU) and the Perceived ease-of-use (PEU) determine the
intention to use (IU) a specific technology or information system. In this
research, the TAM model is validated in Chile, considering the cultural factors
of this country, through an application of the model to university students.
The results show that the TAM model works in Chile, regardless of the studied
technology or the cultural aspects of the country. Finally, new questions arise
related to this topic such as the influence of the intensity of use,
familiarity with the technology and the individual's reference group for the
technologies aimed to encourage communication among people.

Traditional Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) studies on interactive products
are mostly instrumental in nature, focusing on usability issues when performing
tasks in a work environment. This stream of research is frequently criticized
for its narrow focus. More recently, the field of HCI is embracing a new
concept called 'user experience' (UX) which consists of 3 facets: (1) beyond
instrumental; (2) emotion and affect; and (3) the experiential to address its
criticism. UX is acclaimed to be the 'thing' that can capture the full variety
and the emerging aspects of technology use. In similar situation like
traditional HCI studies, traditional technology adoption studies are also
criticized as being overly cognitive-oriented with little consideration for
affective factors and emotional experiences of the individuals. Applying the
concept of UX to traditional technology adoption model, this paper synthesizes
these two streams of research to propose a 'user experience'-based technology
adoption model for the interactive mobile technology.

Keywords: User experience; Technology acceptance model

Using Participatory Design and Card Sorting to Create a Community of
Practice

In this case study, we developed a scenario-based card sorting |method to
assist in the co-design of a community of practice in user experience. Card
sorting is typically used for the development of a computer interface. In this
work, we modified and extended the use of card sorting to the participatory
design of an organizational interface: a community of practice. The data we
gathered informed the design of the both the real-world community and the
virtual/digital artifacts that supported our community.

Keywords: Community; Card Sort; Participatory Design; Engagement

"Crowdsense" -- Initiating New Communications and Collaborations between
People in a Large Organization

Crowdsense is a novel information and communication system, intended to
promote and enable exploration and collaboration within large organizations.
The system is designed with the aim of solving several of these organizations'
requirements. The first is to provide employees with information which is
relevant to them dynamically, without requiring them to spend time logging onto
intranet and internet sites. The second is stimulating communication between
people with relevant expertise who may not know about each other. The third
requirement is to provide a knowledge centre within the organization which
people can both search and contribute to. The system provides an accessible
layer which enables easy exploration, addition and correction of data by users.
The contributions of this paper are the background to the project, system and
trial description, feedback from user testing and discusses a central success
factor -- that of engagement.

With the understanding that individual innovativeness plays an important
role in organizations, both practitioners and researchers are interested in
finding ways to promote individual innovation. Based on the theoretical lens of
Structural Holes Theory and Social Cognitive Theory, we examined the impact of
network positions, degree of participation and social interaction on individual
innovativeness based on the archival data of an organization's online system.
The results reveal that individuals who have more structural holes contribute
more innovative ideas in the online community, and more responding from peers
encourages more future innovation contribution. Implications for research and
practice are discussed.

Co-creation is gaining popularity as a means to collect creativity from the
crowd. With web-based co-creation platforms, the general public can participate
in the product design process and also gain rewards. In this paper, the demands
of users to participate in co-creation was explored through the implementation
of a co-creation competition, and the motivations of users were verified
through an empirical research using a web-based experiment with a theoretical
framework built on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The result of the
co-creation competition confirmed the existence of demands to co-create and the
analysis of the experiment verified the explanatory power of TAM under the
context of co-creation, verifying only a part of the TAM3 constructs.

This paper presents the pilot study of a project for which the main aim is
to implement an evaluation methodology service for the identification of the
best locations on Cypriot web space based on eye tracking studies. Advertising
budget, social demographics and web usage are some of the factors that are
being considered. During this pilot study, a description in existing patterns
of advertisement placement on websites is first presented. Then we present the
methodologies of two pilot studies where user data are collected with the use
of eye tracking technologies in order to understand how users look at Web
advertising and how effective each location is as well as Marketers'
questionnaire. Stimuli were three Cypriot websites with advertisements of
various types and three locations: ads being static and animated, types being
skyscraper and display ads and location varied around the page. Eye-tracking
data are compared to ad choices of marketing managers in Cyprus who rated the
ad position and it's attention value. Results demonstrate the correlation
between user attention, advert types and the value as rated by marketers. This
pilot study revealed conclusions that could form the basis towards predicting
ad effectiveness of webpages with the use of ad number, location, size, and
type.

Keywords: advert attention; online advertising; eye tracking; CPM

Exploring the Impact of Users' Preference Diversity on Recommender System
Performance

Recommender systems present an effective alternative to subject access in
the domain of reading for leisure. They are particular valuable for the
discovery of novel and serendipitous finds. In the recommender system
evaluation literature, a trade-off has been recognized between accuracy and
surprise/non-obviousness, and more recently, that between accuracy and
diversity of the recommendation set. It is argued in this paper that a proper
balance between accuracy and diversity might lie in users' "preference
diversity," a construct we propose to represent how wide a user's reading
interests are. Users with more diverse interests might appreciate more novel
and diverse set of recommendation. Drawing from marketing literature and our
own empirical studies, this paper discusses how the motivation for diversity
might influence users' preference for cultural goods such as books and music,
and more specifically their responses to recommendations. Future study is
needed to further examine the relationship between user preference diversity
and proper degree of diversity of the recommendation set.

The paper presents a usability evaluation of the Graphical User Interface
(GUI) of an Electronic Health Record System (EHR). The topic of interest was to
explore the system's usability in the context of nursing process documentation.
A cognitive walk through approach was used. The data were analyzed with content
analysis and the results show that challenges identified were related to
navigating and finding information in the system. Even though there were
problems in progressing from one phase to another in nursing process
documentation, the system represented some types of predictability and
consistency in the functions. Education, training and support are needed to be
able to use the EHR for nursing documentation. Mandating standardization
regarding format, content and terminology to improve the EHR systems
functionality regarding facilitate nursing process documentation is
recommended.

User Experience in Shopping and Business

This paper extends the analytic framework of user experience design into the
area of strategic management by adopting the VRIO framework. We adopted
value-rarity-imitability-organization (VRIO) framework and applied this
integrated scheme into the investigating market cases. The first case study is
the analysis of competitive advantages of two successful smartphone device
makers, Apple (iPhone) and Samsung (Galaxy). UX Values (attractive design, ease
of use, diverse applications), Rarity (simplicity, innovative interface,
ecosystem), Imitability (patent, brand identity), and Organization (UX control
tower, role of CXO) are employed to analyze and compare the strategies of those
two most successful smartphone makers. In the second case study we compared the
UX strategies of Google and Naver in the global and local levels. Through the
case studies this paper shows a strong implication that UX can be extended into
the corporate resources and capability, and VRIO framework utilized for the
analysis of competitive advantages for the market leadership.

Music object features are complex and multifaceted, ranging from
short-term/low-level features to long-term/high-level features, in which the
semantic gap in between has not been properly resolved yet. In this paper, we
introduce a graph-based approach to organize different aspects of features in a
unified way. Based on the graph, various kinds of features could be related to
and associated with each other. However, by further investigating the graph
structure, we observe that the node degree distribution asymptotically follows
a power law. As a result, some hubs (i.e., high-degree nodes) will dominate
most metrics; the representation of graph semantics could be degenerated.
Therefore, we introduce the graph projection operator to reduce the graph
complexity and "compress" the graph accordingly. The graph projection is a
method of refactoring edge weights, in which only a particular set of nodes are
reserved to show the intrinsic structure of graph. To demonstrate the
feasibility of graph-based approach, we introduce two applications (music
clustering and auto-tagging); and perform experiments. According to our
experiment study, the performance of projected graph is better than that of
unprojected graph.

The objective of our study was to evaluate usefulness and effectiveness of
Human Centered GeoVis prototype"The SanaViz" against a conventional GeoVis
application Instant Atlas. The SanaViz is an interactive, internet based
application aimed at facilitating visual exploration of public health data, and
in this context telehealth data from Brazil. A cross sectional, within-subject,
mixed methods study design was utilized. A convenient sample of 20 study
participants from diverse backgrounds was enrolled. The users were asked to
perform 5 tasks using both the GeoVis applications. Univariate analyses were
performed for continuous and categorical variables. Repeated measures of
analysis of variance was performed on the within-subject design to test for
significant differences between "the SanaViz" and Instant Atlas. All analysis
was performed using SAS v9.1. Results showed that "The SanaViz" required less
time, less assistance and fewer attempts and was reported as easier than
Instant Atlas.

From the original game console, the Xbox has rapidly evolved into a
comprehensive entertainment platform where tens of millions of users could not
only play video games but also watch movies and TVs, listen music and enjoy
Apps. Therefore, building a cross media ranker to provide relevant and
personalized search results for Xbox users has become an interesting and
imperative task. In this paper, we present our recent progress on improving
Xbox's cross media ranker by mining massive click log data and generating
multi-class relevance labels. Our experimental results have shown that
incorporating the click likelihoods into the label generation yields better
click-performance and meanwhile maintains comparable NDCG values, as compared
to solely using the human labels generated by a small number of human judges.

Companies consider the check-in service as an new advertising channel to
promote the companies and products. The check-in based advertisement always has
different level of social cues richness. Determining an effective social cues
design in check-in based advertisement is a critical question. This research
explores which social cues design will be appropriate in check-in based
advertisement. The results of a laboratory experiment supported that the design
of higher social cues richness increases higher advertising effectiveness
measured by attitude toward the ad in general. Social media users would intend
to use the appropriate design if the design is effective and
easy-to-be-memorized.

This study analyzes the perceptions of different groups of consumers for and
against the disintermediation of travel agencies also considering the relative
power in influencing the tourist's choices exerted by user generated-content
(UGC). A web-based survey is carried out in Spain and 961complete
questionnaires was obtained. A latent segmentation was applied on factors
identified running an exploratory factor analysis on a list of 16 statements,
the use and frequency of use of the Internet to make hotel reservations, if
consumers are bookers or lookers, and they have changed hotel reservations
after having read UGC. Findings revealed that different clusters exist based on
the identified factors and aforementioned variables, and that significant
differences between these clusters based on sociodemographic characteristics,
their behaviour in using the Internet for searching for information and/or
buying, and the extent to which they change the accommodation that had been
suggested by a travel agent after having read UGC.

This article examines the effects of social recommendations on consumers'
purchase intentions at different stages of online shopping. Drawing on
construal level theory (CLT) and research on social tie strength, this study
hypothesizes that the persuasive effects of recommendations from one's close
friends (i.e., strong social ties) and those from one's acquaintances (i.e.,
weak social ties) will differ depending on shopping stages consumers are in.
Results from a laboratory experiment reveal that in the initial shopping stage,
the effects of recommendations from weak ties on consumers' purchase intentions
will be stronger than those from strong ties; however in the latter shopping
stage, the reverse will happen. Research and managerial implications are
discussed.

Extant literature on product recommendation decision aids mainly focus on
the use of individual aids in isolation. However, consumers typically shop
using a two-step decision making process that necessitates the provision of
both detailed attributes information and overall utility value of an item.
Drawing on the information processing strategy switching paradigm as the
theoretical lens, this paper posits that consumers who are provided with an
attribute (alternative)-based screening aid in conjunction with an alternative
(attribute)-based explanation-supported evaluation aid would expend less
decision effort. That is, one aid should provide either attribute-based or
alternative-based information while the other aid should provide a different
type of information. In this manner, consumers benefit from both types of
information and enjoy a more efficient decision process.

Despite a tremendous increase in the online sales of experiential products
(e.g., clothes), how to present such kind of products to better intrigue online
consumers remains unsolved. Relative to model presentation (i.e., presented by
professional models), peer presentation (i.e., presented by peer consumers) is
emerging as a new way of IT-enabled product presentation welcomed by online
clothing merchants. Drawing on the Construal Level Theory, we examine the
effects of peer presentation vs. model presentation, and the fitness between
recommendation messages and these two types of presentation. We propose that
compared to model presentation, peer presentation yields a closer psychological
distance to a consumer, and is likely to arouse a lower level mental construal
of the consumer. Thus, alongside peer presentation, a recommendation message
that fits a low level construal (i.e., secondary features) is more persuasive.
Contrarily, alongside model presentation, a recommendation message that fits a
high level construal (i.e., primary features) is more persuasive. Lab
experiments and a field experiment are designed to test these hypotheses.